Authors Archive - Page 4 of 17

Review

Nasreen Mohamedi: Singularity and Sociability

Nasreen Mohamedi’s hand-written letter to her close friend, artist Nilima Sheikh exudes a sense of both restraint and tenderness. With her formal handwriting, she composes what appears as a verse of concrete poetry – simultaneously referencing and exploring ideas of space – on a piece of graph paper. Providing a window into the late Modernist’s preoccupations with nature, abstraction, and the limits of perception, this letter, describing the seashore at Kihim, also inspires the title of her latest retrospective at Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation (JNAF) – Nasreen Mohamedi: The Vastness, Again and Again.

Review

Weaving a World: Kanishka Raja’s Ground Control

By Aparna Andhare

Bright as a computer game on a screen, Ground Control began with references to music, borrowing its title from David Bowie, and has an aerial perspective, if not the tin-can view. Is the artist Ground Control and who is Major Tom? The roles reverse playfully, and the show, like a game, moves effortlessly between footprints of buildings, courts and playing fields, and outlines of urban spaces. The vibrant several shades of colour — earthy oranges and reds, purples, greens, blues — are interspersed with bold white lines, which resemble chalk or markers on a field.

International Reviews

Imprinting Nature: Simryn Gill’s Naga Doodles

By Henry Noltie

In the display case next to the skin is a nature-printed image made in Madras in 1857 by Henry Smith. Unlike Gill’s snakes, Smith’s specimen was artfully laid out in an elegant sinuosity, its two surfaces inked to yield a mirror-image pair when passed through a printing press. There is a history behind the contemporary work. Smith was a government printer, who claimed originality to his method of nature-printing (a process that has always been somewhat experimental), but one that was taken up by Hugh Cleghorn who in South India made many simple black prints of plant and tree parts as part of the earliest phase of the conversion of tropical forests into plantations: in his case for coffee and cinchona.

Blog

How do you start writing?

By Ranjana Dave

My residency has ended, but I still have updates to share as I work on the final text. These two months have offered me the time, space and resources to unpack a set of research questions. They’ve also offered me valuable insights on how I write. This blog serves two distinct purposes: it is an account of how I have written, and also a reminder to myself as I ease back into this final stretch of writing.

Review

Mapping Connections: Linking Nature, History and Art

By Jasmine Shah Varma

The 101 years old Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) in Mumbai, home to historical artefacts that tell stories about India’s past, hosted unusual visitors – contemporary art installations. Fourteen Indian artists were invited to create artworks for an exhibition Rhizome – Tracing Ecocultural Identities, curated by Jesal Thacker, amidst the museum’s vast collection. The display of the artworks is spread across the museum’s two levels and in thematically different sections. As a visitor to this exhibition, you need a map in hand to spot the works, which are not easy to locate or noticeable in the museum’s stellar collection.

Essay

Arpita Akhanda: The Memory Collector

By Rituparna Roy

In the past decade and a half, significant art has been produced on the subject of Partition, its aftermath and afterlives – with focus on geographical sites of ancestry, the border, migration and displacement, refugee colonies and inherited memories. Arpita is the youngest of the artists who have made this theme their own, to varying degrees. But what really distinguishes her oeuvre is that it is entirely predicated upon ‘familial postmemory’.

Interview

Sink or Swim, but Always Build: In conversation with Dinesh Vazirani

By Fatima Karan

Fatima Mahdi Karan speaks to Dinesh Vazirani about what the art world in India needs right now, as well as the sometimes painful messaging that emerges from auctions.

Essay

Remembering Vivan Sundaram: 1943-2023

By Emilia Terracciano

Saddened by his passing, Emilia Terracciano remembers Indian contemporary artist Vivan Sundaram. He summoned up all his energies from his great reservoir of wisdom and experience. He was an unstoppable creator, who never gave up, no matter how dark the situation. He reminded me that optimism is something one must purposefully marshal, a form of discipline one ought to cultivate, against all internal and external threats of dejection and hopelessness. That optimism is another word for political action.

Interview

Vision and Revision

By Sophia Powers

India Art Fair founder and fair director Neha Kirpal describes the myriad challenges and rewards of the India Art Fair on the eve of its 7th edition.

Interview

The Business of Philanthropy: Conversation with Feroze Gujral

By Mayank Mansingh Kaul

Director of the Gujral Foundation and Outset India, Feroze Gujral has supported prodigal talent in recent years, espousing unexpected causes in the Indian art world. In a rare, first such interview, she speaks with Mayank Mansingh Kaul on her vision for the arts in India, ideas that preoccupy her voraciously, and directions for future projects.

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